Authors: Chris Grabenstein

Hell Hole (18 page)

BOOK: Hell Hole

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“Murderers! Death
merchants!”

We're walking up the boardwalk with Gladys and just passed this gigantic, blinking food stand where they sell deep-fried Twinkies, Snickers, and Oreos.

“Why don't they just rip out people's hearts? Jam lard up their arteries?”

As you might imagine, tofustrami and ying yang shakes have never been first choice on the boardwalk stroller's menu, not when there are still more prepackaged snack cakes and candy bars to be dipped in batter and plunged into bubbling oil. I'm thinking a deep-fried Baby Ruth would be delicious, once you got past a name that sounds like a gruesome form of child abuse.

“I'm only narcing on Skeletor because he's a greedy rip-off artist,” says Gladys. “Five hundred percent markup â¦”

Ceepak does a hand chop toward the chain-link fence blocking off access to Pier Four.

“How does one gain entrance to the Hell Hole? Scale the fence?”

“Jesus, Ceepak, did somebody deep-fry your brain today? You
think a bunch of junkies are going to climb over a twelve-foot-tall fence? Half of them are flying so high they can't even see their own fucking feet, so how they gonna pull a Spider-Man and scale the wall?”

“I see.” Ceepak. The guy never loses his patience, even when dealing with reformed crazy people like Gladys.

“Follow me.” She leads us over to one of the concrete ramps that take you from the boardwalk down to the beach.

“There's a secret trapdoor underneath. I think it's where some of the gears that made the room spin used to be.” She crouches in the sand and points to the dark shadows between pilings. “It's back in there.”

I remember that the Hell Hole was the first attraction on the left when you entered Pier Four, right across from the Chair-O-Planes. I take a step backward and look up. There's a stockade fence decorated with faded clown-face cutouts, but I can see the chipped paint on what used to be the carousel top of that flying-chair ride. Rusty chains dangle down to what are basically swing-set seats with pull-down safety bars you slide across your lap so you could hang on for dear life when that rotor up top sent the chairs flying.

“Unfortunately,” says Ceepak, “we really can't investigate Skeletor's lair without a search warrant.”

“What?” says Gladys. “You actually pay attention to the Constitution?”

“Particularly the Fourth Amendment. As I'm sure you're aware, all searches are, by definition, an invasion of privacy.”

“Even if it's a drug den?” I ask. Maybe I watch Fox news too much.

“Even then, Danny. However, we can, I feel confident, go take a closer look.” Ceepak hunkers down and moves into the darkness. I follow.

“Have fun,” yells Gladys. “I need to be back at the restaurant. We're doing six-bean chili tonight!”

Beans, beans. The musical fruit.

Ceepak duckwalks forward. “Let's see if we come across something in plain view that might justify a search wider than our wingspans.”

We creep forward and come to the entrance: a four-foot square cut into the planks overhead.

“See it, Danny?” Ceepak points to a sticker affixed to the creosote-soaked pillar closest to the entryway: the cute little comic book devil. Hot Stuff himself.

Ceepak sinks back on his haunches. Shakes his head.

“We've probably come too far from the public areas of the beach to justify invoking the plain sight doctrine. Besides, the cartoon sticker, in and of itself, means nothing.” He looks bummed. Leans against the piling to think.

It's kind of cramped underneath this end of the pier. Makes me wonder why there are so many songs about romancing your girl on a blanket under the boardwalk while smelling hot dogs and French fries. I think you'd get barnacles on your butt and sand in your eyes from everybody walking overhead.

“Shit!” screams a girl above us. “Shit! Help! Fuck!”

Ceepak springs up. Sticks his head into the entryway.

“Smell of gas fuel,” he shouts. “Smoke.”

“Fire!” screams the girl. “You stupid fuck!”

Ceepak pops back down.

“Danny?”

“Sir?”

“Call nine-one-one.”

Damn. Still no cell phone.

“I'll run up to the boardwalk!”

“Roger that. Summon the fire department. I'll go in. Find the girl. See if anyone else is trapped inside.”

“Right.”

“Go!” Ceepak hauls himself up into the hole. Now I smell it too. Not French fries and hot dogs but plywood burning and fifty years of carnival-ride paint melting. Then I'm hit with an acrid whiff of that gas they pump into eighteen-wheelers at truck stops. Diesel.

All of a sudden I'm running while thinking about arson because my buddy Mike, who's with the volunteer fire department, told me that sometimes firebugs do this thing where they start a spectacular gasoline
fire up high in a structure and a diesel fire down low. The gas fire burns fast, gets everybody's attention. The diesel starts slower but burns hotter. The fire department goes up to put out the gas fire, the one everybody can see. While they're up there, the diesel-fueled blaze kicks in and cuts off their exit, traps the guys up high with no way out or back down.

I fly up that ramp back to the boardwalk.

“Fire!” I scream. “Call nine-one-one! Fire!”

A lot of people are staring at me now. They're licking orange-and-white swirl cones. Nibbling frosted pretzels.

Nobody's whipping out their cell phones.

Except this one guy. He's with his family, buying the wife and two kids, boy and girl, deep-fried Ring Dings or Ho Hos or Moon Pies. He sports a mustache, mirrored sunglasses, and, God bless him, an FDNY baseball cap!

He snaps his cell phone shut.

“Called it in. What's the situation?”

I point toward the fence. Now you can see the smoke, billowing black clouds of it.

“Fire in abandoned ride. Hell Hole.”

“Paulie? Gerard?” These two other guys come around the corner nibbling deep-fried wads of doughy chocolate and stringy nougat. Milky Ways, I think. One has on a navy-blue T-shirt, says
Engine 2
3 on the chest. The other's wearing this fire-engine red tank top. More FDNY apparel.

“What's up, cap?”

“Paulie, grab a can.” The captain with the mustache points at a fire extinguisher hanging on the wall inside the food stand, pretty close to the bank of French fryers. Guess grease fires are an occupational hazard in the candy-bar-battering biz.

“Gerard, you got a flashlight?”

“Not on me. In the truck.”

“I do!” I say because I always carry a Maglite in my cargo shorts.

“Then, let's roll!” says the captain. We run toward the fence. The firefighter named Gerard grabs a handful of links and shakes it hard. “It's not coming down.”

“So we're going over,” says the captain.

None of these guys is wearing boots. They're all in sneakers and docksiders.

Paulie's caught up with us. He's lugging the fire extinguisher.

“I'll toss it over!” he yells.

“Guess that means I'll catch it!” says Gerard and he proceeds to haul himself up and over the fence in two swift moves.

“What's your name?” the captain asks me.

“Danny Boyle. Sea Haven PD.”

“Dave Morkal. FDNY.”

We both start scaling the wall.

“My partner went in from underneath,” I say between huffs and puffs. “We heard a girl screaming. Smells like arson.”

“Really? What's arson smell like?”

We swing over the top rail.

“Diesel fuel,” I say when I land on the other side.

Captain Morkal nods. “You could be right.” He looks around. Reminds me of Ceepak assessing a situation. He gestures toward the dangling seats on the Chair-O-Plane ride. “Tear off some safety bars, Paulie. Gerardâyank down a couple chains. Get us about two, three hundred feet.”

“On it.”

Man, these guys know how to rip and tear stuff apart fast.

I blink twice and Paulie and Captain Morkal come running back from the Chair-O-Plane brandishing these wicked-looking lengths of steelâsafety bars they've transformed into wrecking bars. They head over to the boarded-up entrance to the Hell Hole while Gerard tugs down hard on a rusty suspension cable.

“Chain!” he yells and I hear the links clattering into a heap on the boards.

“Boyle?” This from Captain Morkal. He and Paulie are using their poles to pry off the plywood.

“Sir?”

“When we go in, stay low. Air's best near the floor.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Chain!”

I whip around. Gerard just ripped down another chain. I turn back, look up. There are all sorts of flames shooting up behind the two-story-tall peak of the Hell Hole facade. Smoke is actually shooting out of the nostrils of the humongous demon head looming over the entrance.

I hear the two firefighters rip the plywood sheet covering the doorway free.

“Gerard?”

The third man comes running, dragging a three-hundred-foot steel rope. Looks like he hooked three separate chair strands together to make it.

“All set, sir.”

“Boyle? Flashlight.”

Captain Morkal leads the way. Paulie is second, hauling the can that he squirts at any flames that flare up around us. I'm the third man in. Gerard's behind me, laying down the chain as we go. I'm not exactly sure why, but I figure he knows what the hell he's doing even if I don't.

“What's your partner's name?” Morkal shouts over his shoulder.

“Ceepak.”

We inch our way down the tunnel of terror. Past what's left of the mannequin who used to leap out of the shadows and jab at your butt with a pitchfork. Morkal shines the flashlight up ahead. The tunnel is smoky. Thick with haze. It's like being inside a chimney. My eyes sting.

“Ceepak?” Morkal yells. “Ceepak?”

“Ceepak!” I yell it too.

We reach the end of the corridor. Another door. The sliding entrance to the revolving chamber.

“He in there?”

“I think so.”

Without a word, the three firefighters attack the door with their makeshift pry bars.

“Bring the chain in when we enter,” says Captain Morkal.

“Roger that.”

I swear it's like I'm with three Ceepaks on a mission to rescue Ceepak.

“Come on, you goddamnâ” Paulie grunts. Leans into his bar. The door squeaks. He grunts again, it gives.

“Ceepak!” All three of them are screaming it now.

“Over here.”

Morkal swings the light.

I see Ceepak. Looks like he's administering first aid to a girl. A skinny blonde. No.
The
blonde. Jenny. The one in the three-triangle bikini. Looks like some of her gauzy beach wrap got burnt.

“He started it!” she screams. “Cooking his shit. Fucking stupid smack junkie idiot!”

The light beam swings where she points.

Lieutenant Worthington. Sprawled on his back. A goofy grin plastered on his face. We may all be about to be deep-fried to a crackly crunch but he's floating off to happy land. I see a thin rubber hose tied off around his upper arm. A syringe, candle, and small square of crinkled aluminum foilâhis worksâscattered on the ground next to him.

“We need to evacuate!” says Captain Morkal. “Now!”

“Roger that,” answers Ceepak.

I see flames shooting up along the curved edges of the circular floor. Licking their way into the room with us.

“However,” Ceepak reports calmly, “the trap door exit I came in through is currently inaccessible.”

“Paulie?” yells Morkal. “Grab the girl. Gerardâyou and me will haul out the drunk.”

The three firefighters lumber across the foggy floor. Pick up their charges. Every now and then, Paulie, who has the blonde slung over his shoulder like a laundry bag, shoots a jet of foam at flames attempting to invade his personal space.

“You sure you're okay?” Morkal says to Ceepak.

“Roger that. It's all good.”

“Tell you what, I think it'll all be a whole lot better once we're outside. G'head. I've got your back. Boyle? Lead the way!”

BOOK: Hell Hole

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